by Don Berry
The alternative was to abandon the river entirely and try to outfit overland parties, perhaps for the Crow country. Since the Three Forks and Great Falls areas had proved so inhospitable, it would be better to make the fall hunt in areas where such vicious opposition might be avoided.
All very well, but there were no horses for such a venture. They would have to be obtained from the Sioux. The augmented party dropped back downriver to the mouth of the Bad River (present Pierre, South Dakota), but no luck. Leaving the main camp where they were, Ashley descended still lower, past the Grand Detour, looking for some Sioux with horses to dispose of. When he reached Fort Kiowa, just below Grand Detour, it was the 19th of July, 1823, the summer well advanced. Here he received some pleasant and unexpected news, in the form of a letter from Indian Agent O’Fallon, written a month before: the military was on its way, an expedition had been organized and was coming to discipline the Aricaras.
Ashley immediately abandoned the plan of buying horses for an overland expedition and left Fort Kiowa the same afternoon, hurrying back to his camp with the joyous news. Though the general didn’t know it, the military had almost caught him. The grandeur and majesty of the United States Army was only thirteen miles below Fort Kiowa, at Fort Recovery.
The retreating keelboat Yellow Stone Packer had arrived at Fort Atkinson on June 18, two weeks after leaving Ashley. Ashley‘s letter was presented to Colonel Henry Leavenworth, commanding, and augmented by the accounts of the boatmen. (Quite ferocious accounts, no doubt, in order to explain how they happened to be going downriver when the action was upstream.)
If any military action were to be taken, Colonel Leavenworth would have to do it on his own responsibility; getting orders from below would require an unconscionable delay. Leavenworth made his decision the same day, and six companies of the 6th Infantry were alerted to march. Word of the expedition was sent to the proper authorities. O’Fallon called on Joshua Pilcher for some additional help, and it may have been a call of desperation. No one had a very high opinion of Leavenworth’s ability to deal with Indians; he was a good officer, but his experience with Indians was negligible. Pilcher’s expert knowledge could mean a great deal on the expedition.
It was decided to round up what allies they could among the Sioux, and Pilcher was appointed subagent to accomplish the job. This was, naturally, an appeal to the public spirit of the man, since arrangements for compensation were missing. "Great will be your sacrifce in a pecuniary point of view," 0’Fallon wrote Pilcher, but, on the other hand, "you will soon be amply compensated in the bosom of the richest fur country in the world."
O‘Fallon then made an impassioned plea to Ashley’s defectors, the "Forty three men who deserted Genl. Ashley." He referred to his own mortification at their desertion, and General Ashley’s—"he is my friend, he is your friend, he is the people’s friend"—and recruited about twenty of them to serve as Leavenworth's boatmen. It may have been his comment to the effect that the murdered men’s "spirits have pursued, shedding tears in your tracks." That kind of thing is hard to take, even for a cowardly voyageur.
Leavenworth’s party, numbering about 220 officers and men, left Fort Atkinson on June 22, 1823. The Yellow Stone Packet and two other keelboats transported supplies, artillery, and part of the expeditionary force. Pilcher followed with two boats of his own, and a brigade of Missouri Fur Company men.
After a bad voyage, which included the complete loss of one of the army keelboats, the party reached Fort Recovery on July 19, While the military paused there to refit, Pilcher picked up a small band of Yankton Sioux and sent out messengers to other bands in the vicinity. Within a couple of days there were bands of Saone Sioux (under Fire Heart) and Hunkpapa Sioux to the number of 200 ready to join the expedition.
In a letter to O’Fallon, Leavenworth expressed his intentions: "If the Aracaras and Mandans unite, I shall proceed to the Mandans; and if they keep the Aracaras in their village, I shall attack them .... The honor of American arms must be supported at all events."
The expedition moved on from Fort Recovery on July 22 and joined Ashley’s full party eight days later. Here the last formalities of organization were arranged: Ashley’s men (about eighty) were divided into two companies, respectively under Hiram Scott and the young hunter who had been proving himself so useful, Jedediah Smith.1
Pilcher’s Missouri Fur men and the Indian allies were lumped together under Pilcher, who was now a nominal major. Pilcher never did relinquish his majority, though Leavenworth says: "These appointments were merely nominal, and intended only to confer the same privileges and respect on them as were paid to our own officers of the same grade." Ashley was a brigadier general and Henry a major in the militia already, and this was considered adequate.
Now everybody had proper military titles, and the expedition could proceed, secure in the essential rightness of its organization. The whole conglomeration of trappers, Indians, and military was given the name and style of the Missouri Legion, which has a nice martial ring to it.
By August 8 they had reached a point about fifteen miles below the Ree towns. There they disembarked and made ready for the assault to begin the next day. Leavenworth had borrowed forty rifles from the traders, which helped make up for the loss of those on the wrecked keelboat. The Sioux were given strips of white muslin to tie around their heads
for identification.
Meanwhile, word of Leavenworth's punitive expedition had reached the government, and was taken very seriously. While the colonel's superiors endorsed his action, they were aware of the dangers involved should the party be set back. They were deeply concerned that this first foray against trans-Mississippi Indians should be completely successful. In one letter Major General Gaines makes the flat statement that 'premature effort, on our part, will but . . .enhance the evil we thus attempt to correct."
In all the letters discussing the coming battle, there is a note of optimism; the phrase "I have but little doubt of [Leavenworth’s] success" recurs frequently. Nevertheless, the prudent General Gaines took the more concrete precaution (on July 26) of ordering up six companies of the 1st Infantry, to begin marching immediately to St. Louis. Also, 'should it be advisable," he suggests four more companies of the 7th Infantry and provisions to secure "if necessary" a battalion of mounted riflemen from the governor of Missouri. These troops were to be supplied with provisions for up to nine months. General Gaines was taking no chances; he intended to be sure.
The importance of the whole affair was summed up in a letter from General Atkinson of July 15, 1823. It was a matterof utmost necessity to "impress the Indians in that quartery with a just idea of our capacity to chastise every outrage they may commit."
In view of all these expectations, precautions, and concerns, the ensuing fiasco appears even more dismal.
II
Saturday, August 9, 1823
In the morning the boats were. put in command of Major Wooley, one of Leavenworth’s officers. Pilcher’s party was set to man them, presumably because Leavenworth had no intention of trusting Ashley’s small group of deserter-voyageurs. Four boats were left, and there were ten men to a boat. They were ordered to proceed upstream (bringing with them the artillery), while the remainder of the force went on by land. By now Leavenworth’s command had been swelled by new Sioux recruits to about a thousand men.
When the Grand River had been crossed and the Ree villages were only five or six miles ahead, Leavenworth dispatched an advance party of Sioux under Pilcher. These were under instruction to attack the Aricaras if feasible, but principally to prevent their running away. Leavenworth’s plan required them all neatly stacked into their picketed villages.
The Sioux set out with such enthusiasm that they quickly outdistanced the bulk of the party by more than Leavenworth had intended. But this, after all, was what the Sioux had come for; a little roughhouse with the Rees.
Pilcher came back to hurry up the main body; the Sioux had gotten a full hour ahead and were engaged
with the Aricaras on the plain about a half mile from the villages. There were between six hundred and eight hundred warriors in the village, quite enough to give the relatively small advance party trouble.
Leavenworth hurried, and shortly afterward the main force of the Missouri Legion came out onto the plain where a full-scale Indian battle was swirling. The noise was incredible, and the sight itself must have shocked Leavenworth’s neat military sensibilities.
Intertribal warfare was not conducted along strategic lines; it was just one big free-for-all, to the accompaniment of the maximum possible noise. There was no particular plan of attack. There they were and here you were; mix it up.
Mix it up they did. Screaming and caterwauling, the Indians engaged in their own simple variety of warfare, making the plain look, according to Clyman, "more like a swarm bees than a battle field they going in all possible directions." Leavenworth formed a good military line at the edge of the plain.
Now it was discovered that the distribution of white identifying bands for the Sioux was more useful in theory than in practice. The allies were so inextricably mixed with the enemy that there was no possibility of diferentiating between them, white muslin headbands or not. Leavenworth’s line dared not fire.
Seeing the reinforcements coming up, the Aricaras broke for their village, now badly outnumbered. The Sioux followed gleefully. Leavenworth moved up behind, finally taking a position just out of gunshot from the villages, about three or four hundred yards away. The Aricaras were now securely pegged in the villages, and stage one of the master plan had been accomplished. Leavenworth’s men sat down to wait for the artillery and watch the aftermath of Indian warfare.
Thirteen or fourteen Rees had been left dead. The Sioux had lost only two, and had seven wounded; a massive victory in Indian terms. The battle had probably been fought by eight hundred to a thousand men; to our more civilized perceptions it would seem that a vicious hand-to-hand fight among that many men should yield a more satisfactory rate. But we are more sophisticated in these matters, and if Indian war seems woefully inefficient to us we must remember it was a different age; they had not our advantages.
Whatever his inefficiencies in mass-number killing, it is undeniable that the Indian made more complete use of the casualties than we are accustomed to do. It was this spectacle to which Leavenworth‘s men were now treated.
Postbattle activities served several important ends. Scalping, for example, was only the beginning; the scalper accrued prestige. Later he would perform a more formal ritual of counting coup, detailing before the tribe his exact actions in the battle, how he took the scalp, and probably as much of his life history as he could remember, with emphasis on feats of warlike valor. This was on the personal level.
The defeated tribe was also humiliated and derided. The bodies of the vanquished were generally mutilated if the victors had time, and this was usually done by squaws. In the present case of the Aricaras, one of the Sioux chiefs brought his squaw up to a Ree corpse near the village wall. With a war club the woman began to smash the body to a pulp, while the chief taunted the Aricaras with their weakness and cowardice. As far as the tribe's humiliation was concemed, it genuinely made little difference that the man was already dead. (The same kind of thing was done even when the vanquished tribe was absent, and in the victor’s eyes the ceremony was quite as effective as if the defeated had been watching.)
Other braves were dragging dismembered pieces of the Aricara warriors around the plain. This, too, was a sort of informal humiliation procedure, and also derived from plain malice.
The making of medicine was seldom observed immediately after a battle; it was generally reserved for a more formal triumphal occasion, the tribal celebration of the victory. On this occasion, however, one of the Sioux—of the "grizzle Bear medicine," according to Clyman—did perform a magic ritual directly on the battleground. Walking on his hands and feet, "snorting and mimican the bear in all his most vicious attitudes . . . with his teeth tore out mouth fulls of flesh from the breast of the dead body of the Ree."
Evening came, and the keelboats with the artillery arrived about sundown. The guns were unloaded and disposed along the line in preparation for the next day’s attack. Then the troops settled down for the night.
From inside the Rec villages came the blood—chilling mourning wails of the squaws; outside, the Sioux were still noisily celebrating their triumph, guns tiring, men yelling and shouting and running. The village dogs, upset, were in full voice, and the mules and horses of both sides added their harsh sounds to the general melee. The dead horses and men were beginning to raise a stench, according to Clyman, and the whole scene might have been drawn from the Inferno. It is doubtful that the men got much sleep that night, in particular those whose first experience this was.
***
Sunday, August 10, 1823
In spite of the unpleasantness of the night, the morning of the 10th dawned with a decisive victory in view. The Aricaras were pinned in the villages and all that remained was to pound them with artillery, either destroying the villages or driving the tribe out to face Leavenworths vastly superior force.
Captain Bennet Riley and his company of riflemen were sent to the upper village. The Missouri Fur group, under Henry Vanderburgh, also was stationed there, and one of the cannons was set for the bombardment.
The remainder of the force, including Ashley’s two companies, completed a quarter-moon around the Ree villages on the inland side, pinning the Indians against the river.
The assault began shortly after A.M., with the artillery at the lower village firing the first shot.,The infantry, including Ashley’s men, moved forward and tired a volley "to discharge their guns which had been loaded for some time."
At the upper village the artillery had meanwhile been pouring a murderous barrage into the river. The six-pounder was placed too high, and Sergeant Perkins assiduously plunked balls over the village and into the water until he was stopped. "Though this was presently rectified," writes Morgan, "the effect on the Rees was not remarkable."
This went on all morning without any evident effect. The infantry sat and waited for the Rees to be driven out, occasionally plopping a shot at the stockade. The Sioux, bored with this effete siege warfare, had wandered off into the hills, where they were methodically gorging their way through the Ree cornfields and waiting to see how things turned out.
This was obviously an unproductive beginning for the day. Leavenworth decided to make an infantry assault on the upper village, using Captain Riley’s company of riflemen and possibly backing them up with some of the Sioux irregulars. He sent Pilcher to bring the Indians up. Ashley’s companies were detailed to create a diversion at the lower village. The trappers accordingly scrambled into a ravine within "2O paces" of the lower village and began firing.
Pilcher came back and said the Sioux weren't much interested. The cornfields suited them fine for the time being, and, in any event, they hadn’t been impressed with the whites' warlike prowess. Convinced the charge would fail without the co-operation of the Sioux, Leavenworth called it off.
This infuriated Captain Riley, who had been enthusiastic about the plan, and he demanded the privilege of making the assault anyway, "stating that they had been laying at garison at Council Bluifs for 8 or 10 years doeing nothing but eating pumpkins and now a small chance for promotion occurred and it was denied him and might not occurr again for the next 10 yeares.?"
This kind of talk, one may note, is hardly to be tolerated from a subordinate, and must be counted an unfortunate indiscretion on the part of Captain Bennet Riley. The charge, Leavenworth repeated, was off.
Where force fails, guile may prevail. Leavenworth, according to Chittenden, then concluded he would "try a stratagem." Pilcher said he had better try something, because the Sioux were getting disgusted with the way things were going; at the "present rate, Pilcher did not know how long they would stay around. His opinion of the stratagem was that it could do no harm, at any
rate."
Leavenworth’s stratagem was to send the Aricara interpreter, one Simeneau, to tell the Indians they "were fools that they did not come out and speak with the whites." This, by Leavenworth's sly reasoning, would at least give the whites an "opportunity to examine the works."
It did no harm, but it did no good either, as it failed to come off.
Discouraged with his eiiorts at the upper village, Leavenworth then returned below, contemplating an assault on the lower village instead. Arriving there, he discovered that Lieutenant Morris had enthusiastically used up all but thirteen of his round shot; at which Leavenworth ordered the bombardment abandoned. He then drew all troops back to a camp opposite the boats, a half mile away from the villages.
The withdrawal of the massive white force left the Sioux in the cornfield exposed. Leavenworth warned them of their danger, advising them to withdraw to"‘save their stragglers from the tomahawks of the Aricaras."
Since the Sioux had done most of the fighting so far—had, in fact, won a victory over the Rees—this kindly advice was not taken in the intended spirit. As far as the Sioux could tell, they had opened the campaign well and the whites had failed to follow through. Now they were counseled to "save their stragglers.” It was too much. They disappeared entirely that night.
By the time the withdrawal had been completed it was past 3 P.M. "Orders were given to senior officers of corps to have their men obtain some refreshment as soon as possible, and then to form their corps and march to the enemy’s cornfield to obtain some corn for the subsistence of our men, several of whom, and particularly General Ashley’s men, had not had any provisions for two days." Leavenworth retired to his cabin on the boat for a late lunch.
After lunch the colonel emerged to take counsel with Ashley and Pilcher. While discussing future operations, they saw an interesting group gathered on a hill beyond the upper village; some Sioux and Aricaras, having a little parley. Leavenworth had been afraid for some time—and with some cause—that the Sioux were about to switch sides and unite with the Aricaras. Also, what with the artillery shot almost exhausted, this seemed a particularly auspicious time to consider a peace treaty. Accordingly, Leavenworth and Pilcher hurried to join the Indian parley on the hill.